In a massive departure from the series norm, the campaign in the newly released Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is an online co-op experience from start to finish. Not only is the campaign always online, but as if it thought it was Elden Ring, you can’t pause it, and you’ll get booted for idling.
Maybe it’s secretly an experimental art project on the nature of entropy.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 comes out today with a full campaign and multiplayer mode. The campaign, it seems, goes all in on co-op play. The option to play campaigns in co-op is usually a welcome one but here, co-op is so inherent to the experience that it’s making solo play really hard, with a lack of checkpoints and an expectation that you’re always online and never AFK (h/t IGN).
Apparently, trying to complete this campaign on your own ramps up the tedium, with you having to do things like repeat objectives scattered around an environment–such as placing explosives in certain spots–that were clearly designed to be handled by multiple players all working together.
It’s an unfortunate situation for those who enjoy a straightforward, linear solo campaign with objectives that feel designed to accommodate solo play. Maybe go back and play 2022’s Modern Warfare II? It was kind of a snoozefest in some ways, but hey, at least you wouldn’t get kicked for idling.
It kind of reminds me of that one time me and two friends of mine managed to somehow make it through a Destiny raid without the extra three players by running around like crazy people to accomplish certain objectives that were clearly made with more people in mind. It felt like we were getting away with something we shouldn’t’ve been. Maybe tackling Black Ops 7’s campaign solo at least offers some of these transgressive thrills?
